Jayla Jumps In Read online

  SOMETIMES TO FIND YOUR PLACE, YOU JUST HAVE TO JUMP IN.

  When eleven-year-old Jayla finds out that her mother used to be a Double Dutch champion, she’s stunned. Her mom, who’s on doctor’s orders to lower her blood pressure, could move like that?!

  Jayla decides to follow in her mom’s footsteps, thinking that maybe Double Dutch can make her stand out in her big, quirky family. But as she puts together a team at school and prepares to compete, Jayla finds that Double Dutch is about a lot more than jumping rope—and it just might change her life in ways she never imagined.

  Albert Whitman & Co.

  More than 100 years of Goods Books

  www.albertwhitman.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  Jacket art copyright © 2020 by Albert Whitman & Company

  Text copyright © 2020 by Joy Jones

  First published in the United States of America in 2020 by Albert Whitman & Company

  ISBN 978-0-8075-6076-1 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-8075-6077-8 (ebook)

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Printed in the United States of America

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  Jacket art copyright © 2020 by Albert Whitman & Company

  Jacket art and design by Aphelandra Messer

  For more information about Albert Whitman & Company, visit our website at www.albertwhitman.com.

  Thanks to the Wednesday Night Writing Group, DC Retro Jumpers, and Sara Camilli.

  CHAPTER 1

  I knew where babies came from, and I wanted one. Time was running out. Pretty soon I’d be too old to have any fun with another kid in the family. I was already eleven years old, and I still didn’t have a baby brother or sister. My parents needed to get busy. Maybe today would be the day I’d ask them for a sibling.

  Today was Thanksgiving—one of my least favorite holidays. Why? Well, it’s the only holiday that comes with homework. Nobody makes you write a book report about Christmas or take a test about Valentine’s Day. You don’t get any presents. If you’re the only kid in your family, you’re stuck listening to a bunch of boring grown-ups talk. And if there are other kids in your family, well, hopefully they’re better than my cousins.

  We always celebrated Thanksgiving with my mother’s side of the family, and the kids on that side could be pretty horriful. Antwon was my age—eleven—and he was about as sharp as an eraser. Earlier that afternoon, he had come into the kitchen and said to my mom, “Can I help out, Aunt Sherry?” To offer to do any work, he must have been bored to death, too. Anyway, my mother gave him the big blue box of salt and told him to fill the saltshaker. He was sitting at the dining room table hunched over and leaning in the way kids do when they have a complicated word problem to solve. I went over to see what had him concentrating so hard. He was actually trying to drop each grain of salt one-by-one through those tiny holes.

  “Antwon, there’s an easier way to do that,” I said, coming to his side.

  “Really? It’s hard putting each drop into these skinny holes!”

  “I’ll help you. Do this.” I unscrewed the top of the saltshaker, then opened the spout on the box of salt. As I positioned his hands so that he could pour the salt into the shaker, he looked at the process as if we were doing a magic trick.

  “Wow, Jayla, you’re real smart!” And then he gave me a big, warm smile.

  It made me feel a little bit ashamed for calling him dumb, even if it was only inside my head.

  They call Uncle Jimmy’s boys Tommy and Kwame the Human Tsunami. Uncle Jimmy only gets them for the long Thanksgiving weekend, then he doesn’t have them again till school lets out at Christmas. He and his kids’ mom broke up, so he isn’t around them that much and doesn’t know how to make them behave. They break everything they touch. I avoided them, although sometimes they could be funny to watch as long as you stayed far enough away that you didn’t get in trouble along with them.

  I also stayed away from Shontessa. She was your typical stuck-up teenage snob. Every year she would brag that she was going to be getting the coolest sneakers or latest iPhone or some other blingy thing come Christmas. She claimed she had one thousand followers on Instagram. She said she met the real Hello Kitty at the mall. She told me she had gone to a Drake concert and he kissed her backstage. Shontessa was such a huge boaster and bragger. I wouldn’t believe anything she said even if she swore she was lying.

  Most of the family was sitting around the living room, waiting for the food to be ready. It was Daddy’s idea that we should each say what we’re grateful for. Aunt Juicy started off, thanking God for a safe trip from Detroit to DC to be with us and asking Him to give what she called “traveling mercies” for her trip back. Shontessa showed off, of course. “Thank you, God, for the new Apple Watch that Santa’s going to bring me.”

  It was excruciating to sit and listen to each person talk, while the aroma of the roasted turkey was talking to my stomach and the whiff of the stuffing was making my mouth water and the smell of the pie that was warming in the oven was whispering in my ear, Hurry up and eat me. You know I’m going to be scrumptious!

  Now, I can list a zillion things in my life that are awesome. But back on that Thanksgiving Day, it would’ve taken me a while to come up with anything. So when it was my turn to speak, my mouth spilled out with what was on my mind before I could stop myself. I said, “I thank God for the baby sister He’s going to bless my family with for Christmas.”

  Daddy gaped at Mom. Mom had tried to take a sip of water and sputtered on it. Uncle Jimmy started grinning and stuck an elbow into Aunt Juicy’s rib. Cousin Julia raced out the kitchen holding a dripping spoon high like a baton and said, “Lord Jesus! Sherry, you sure did keep that a secret!” Everybody else in the room was wearing expressions that said, OMG.

  “I am not having a baby!” Mom finally got out. Then she turned to me. “Jayla, where did you get the crazy idea that I was having a baby?”

  “I just want something exciting to happen. A baby would make our family more interesting.”

  “Would you find changing dirty diapers, wiping spit-up off your shirt, or trying to calm a crying infant interesting?” Cousin Julia said, arching her eyebrow as she stared me down.

  “Well, it would be different…” But as I thought about it, maybe not different in a way I would like.

  “Where do these kids get these ideas from?” Mom said.

  “They spend too much time on the Internet,” said Cousin Julia.

  “They need to play outdoors instead,” said Aunt Crystal.

  “Yeah, didn’t we have fun? Remember how we used to play kickball?” said Uncle Jimmy.

  “My favorite was hide-and-go-seek,” said Aunt Juicy.

  “What about tag? Juicy, you were always It.” My mother started laughing as she reminisced.

  “I’m sure you all are having a good time walking down memory lane, but how about we finish giving thanks so we can eat?” Daddy said. “Jayla, maybe this time you can say something more appropriate.”

  So I said, “I thank God for everybody who is here for Thanksgiving.”

  I really did love my family. It just seemed like everything they said and did was the same-old, twice-told stuff they had said and done before. Like every year my mother and her sister, my Aunt Crystal, said they were going to go on a diet. And then they would dig into the cornbread dressing and the sweet potato pie and the wine that was going around the table.

  My mom used to be real skinny. I’ve seen pictures of her when she was in high scho
ol. People say we look alike, but I’m short for a fifth grader and my legs are skinny. Daddy describes Mom’s complexion as maple syrup and says I’m cinnamon toast; he teases us by saying, “Between the two of you, if I just add a slab of bacon, I’ve got breakfast.” Mom used to wear short, short skirts and had long, strong legs. Sometimes now, she would huff and puff when she came up the stairs with grocery bags. I remember one time we had to run for the bus. We caught it, but when we got on and sat down, she was so out of breath she couldn’t speak for a minute. And when she did speak, she said, “You wouldn’t believe I used to be the fastest girl in my class, would you?” I wonder what happens to people once they grow up that makes them stop being fast or thin or interesting or fun. It scared me to think about what could happen once you got older. Would I end up slow and thick and dull and dreary when I grew up, too?

  After the last person gave thanks, there was a moment of silence. That’s when a faint slap-slap sound could be heard, followed by cheering.

  “What’s that noise?” somebody said.

  Everybody started looking at everybody else, and eventually all eyes landed on Shontessa. The noise was coming from her direction. The adults threw questions at her like she was a bull’s-eye.

  “What are you looking at?”

  “I bet it’s her phone.”

  “What’s on that phone that’s got your eyes on lockdown?”

  “A Double Dutch team,” Shontessa answered.

  Double Dutch—what was that? It seemed like I had heard the words before, but I couldn’t remember where.

  “Now that really takes me back,” Mom said. She sat up a little straighter. If she had been a puppy, her tail would have been wagging.

  “Kids don’t play games like that anymore,” Uncle Jimmy said. “They can’t move like we used to.”

  “I can’t move like we used to,” Aunt Crystal said with a laugh.

  “Crystal, remember how much time we spent doing Double Dutch?” said Aunt Juicy. “Hours and hours. We barely came in the house to eat.”

  “What exactly is Double Dutch?” I asked. But they were so caught up in their excitement they didn’t hear me.

  “It was you and Sherry who did it the most,” said Aunt Crystal.

  “I remember thinking Double Dutch was a lame game for girls. Then I tried it and it nearly killed me,” said Uncle Jimmy. “You got to be strong to do that. It ain’t no joke.”

  “Mom, what is—”

  “Oh, you smell that? We better get the turkey out of the oven. It’s done!”

  And with that Mom ran into the kitchen to save the turkey and everybody else filed into the dining room. The conversation then drifted to other topics, while the cooks finished fixing the food and setting the table. After a moment of excitement, it seemed like this was going to turn into just another ho-hum, humdrum Thanksgiving.

  Yet now when I look back on it, I see it was that dull Thanksgiving Day that changed my family’s life.

  CHAPTER 2

  That year, we were at Cousin Julia’s house for Thanksgiving dinner. I liked my cousin Julia, but boy, was she old. She wasn’t the oldest of the old people in my mother’s family, but she sure acted like it. Her television wasn’t a flat screen; it had a big hump coming out its back. She didn’t even have cable. Until I was seven years old, she had a telephone that you had to dial by putting your fingers into holes and turning it in a circle. It would make a clackety-clack sound as you dialed the numbers. I kind of liked playing with her phone, but anytime Mom caught me touching it, she would make me stop. Now, Cousin Julia had phones that were not as old-fashioned, but they had long cords that plugged into the wall. She said she had a cell phone, but it was one that was given to her by her job. She always left it at the office at the end of the day because she said she didn’t want to work when she was at home.

  Talking on the phone wasn’t work; it was fun. I wished my school would give everyone phones to take home instead of books. I couldn’t wait till Mom thought I was old enough to have my own phone.

  Cousin Julia’s favorite thing to talk about was her grandchildren. Her son had four kids. They lived in Seattle, Washington, which was a long way from Washington, DC, where we lived.

  “Is Washington, DC, the opposite of the state of Washington?” Antwon asked.

  “How can a city be the opposite of something?” I said to him. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

  “City is the opposite of country,” Shontessa shot back. Who asked her to butt in?

  “No, it isn’t,” I said. “A city is part of a country.”

  Because they lived so far away, Cousin Julia didn’t get to see her grandkids that much. Every Thanksgiving, they called her, and we had to listen to her baby-talk with all her grandbabies and even with her big old son, Ronnie. I’d never met the grandbabies, but I felt like I knew everything about them because she talked about them so much.

  Cousin Julia lived in the Hillcrest section of DC, the neighborhood my family lived in. She lived on Pennsylvania Avenue, which is the same street the president lives on, but Cousin Julia’s house was at the opposite end of the city from the White House. The White House is in northwest and Hillcrest is in southeast DC. I think Hillcrest is prettier than the downtown area around the White House. Downtown is asphalt and office buildings. Our neighborhood has lots of large, leafy trees, all kinds of homes—brick houses, town houses, apartments—and hills. I guess that’s why they called it Hillcrest.

  Cousin Julia’s house was big. It had a lot of nooks and crannies. When I was little, I liked to play hide-and-seek in it. Now Tommy and Kwame did. Today they were pretending to be cave explorers. Instead of walking around on their feet like normal people, they were on their hands and knees, crawling under things. “Look what I found!” Tommy was clutching a long, loopy coil of cords going into the wall by the sofa. “Spaghetti!”

  “Don’t you dare try to eat that,” I scolded him.

  “We’re not going to eat them. They’re going to eat you—they’re snakes!” Kwame said and shook them at my face while they both fell out laughing.

  Cousin Julia’s furniture was a mix of old stuff and new stuff. Her sofa was chubby and green with huge, flouncy cushions, but the chairs were the same shiny, silver ones I’ve seen on one of those TV shows where they redecorate somebody’s whole house during the commercial. She had a digital clock in the kitchen but an antique clock in the dining room. Even though the dining room was big, not all thirteen of us could fit around the table. Some people had to take their plates and sit in the living room.

  But we did all crowd into the dining room for grace. There was Mom and Daddy, of course. Daddy looked like he couldn’t wait to eat. He was craning his neck like he was trying to see when the food was coming out. I saw that Aunt Elizabeth, Shontessa’s mother, was wearing a hat, which was good because she always seemed to be having a bad hair day. Aunt Crystal was standing next to Cousin Eddie, who was standing next to Uncle Jimmy, who had a heavy hand clamped to one shoulder each of Tommy and Kwame. It kept them from squirming away, although it didn’t stop them from squirming. The cooks were standing in the doorway to the kitchen. Usually, one of the adults was called on to lead the prayer, but this year, Aunt Crystal spoke up.

  “Let Antwon say the grace,” she said. “He prayed in front of the whole Sunday school last week and did real good.”

  Antwon was off in a corner with Shontessa, and Aunt Crystal had to call him several times to get him to come out. I could never get up in front of a whole bunch of people, even if it was only my family and I knew everybody. At least if you mess up in front of strangers, you’ll never see them again. Mess up in front of family and they’ll talk about it forever. I could just imagine the gossip:

  “You remember that Thanksgiving when Jayla flubbed up the prayer big time?”

  “Yeah, girl! She was supposed to be praying over the food. Instead we had to pray over her.”

  “Dear God,” Antwon said. “We thank You for this food we ar
e about to receive and we thank You for the miracles You are about to perform. Amen.”

  I wondered how it is that someone as slow as Antwon was brave enough to stand up in public. Was it because he was so clueless? Or did he know something I didn’t know? Whatever it was, I wished I had it.

  Then instead of sitting down at the table or getting himself a plate, he and Shontessa ran back off to a corner of the hallway and were looking at something on her phone screen.

  “What’s got you so caught up?” asked Uncle Jimmy. Shontessa thrust her cell phone at him to show him the YouTube video they were watching. I leaned over her shoulder so I could see, too. It was four girls jumping rope but doing it a way I had never seen before.

  “Look at her jump!” I said. “She’s doing two ropes at the same time! How can she do that?”

  “Man, that ain’t no big deal,” Uncle Jimmy said. “Your mama used to do that all the time. Heck, I even got in the rope every now and then.”

  “No, you all didn’t,” I said. Uncle Jimmy is known for his tall tales.

  “Yes, we did, too. Your mother loved jumping Double Dutch. Did it all the time.”

  “Mom, is that true?”

  My mom wasn’t paying any attention to me.

  “Mom!” I yelled louder. “Can you jump Double Dutch?”

  “Hush that noise, yelling like a girl from the projects.” Mom stuck her head out the kitchen. “Yes, I can jump Double Dutch.”

  “You can jump like them?” I showed her the screen. There were two girls on the screen jumping in rhythm while doing a chant. At one point, they changed positions—the one in front moved back and the one in back moved to the front. How could they do that without missing a beat?

  “Your mother used to do nothing but jump Double Dutch all day long,” said Juicy. Aunt Juicy is my mother’s baby sister. She got her nickname because of her lips. Aunt Juicy now lives in Detroit, but most holidays she comes back to DC. “Not only could she jump, she could do tricks in the rope.”